Valerie Elliott leans out her front door to see the water has swept away her porch Saturday morning at her home in east Greeley. Elliott was among the few allowed back to their homes Saturday morning. She was concerned about the water rising and sweeping away her home completely.

Related Media

The sun shined and the thermometer rose in a welcome sign that life would return to normal on Saturday. But the late-summer sun was no match for the flooding wrath that leveled central and southern Weld County towns along river banks and water ways in a bit of a delayed one-two punch.

It’s an event that will be felt for months to come, county officials say, leaving repair bills stretching easily into the tens of millions of dollars to rebuild after some of the widest-reaching devastation in Weld history.

“We have a long ways to go before we’re even close to returning to normal,” said Steve Reams, bureau chief for the Weld County Sheriff’s Office, noting the continued possibility of downpours overnight. “Rain or no rain, this isn’t going to be a quick recovery. We’ve got weeks and months ahead of us.”

The most visual example might be a long stretch of U.S. 34 east of Greeley that is completely gone from the flood damage. “There will be no repairing that in short order,” Reams said.

While communities in the mountains and foothills worked to rescue residents, dry out and begin repair of the floodwaters’ devastation through their towns on Thursday and Friday, Weld had its turn Friday and Saturday as the rivers rose to record levels, engulfing fields, leveling bridges, carving out chunks of vital roads and in many communities displacing entire neighborhoods.

The Tri-Town areas in the south county, Fort Lupton, Milliken and Johnstown, Greeley and Evans and Kersey all will be digging out and drying off for months.

County engineers have said the water Weld saw in a 48-hour period was the equivalent of 1 trillion gallons that rushed through our backyards. It was the equivalent of 10 feet of wet snow pummeling the area, Weld County commissioner Sean Conway said.

“If this had been snow, every building in the county would have collapsed,” he said, after spending Saturday assessing the damage. “That’s what we’re dealing with.”

The rapid waters forced the shutdown of 140 roads, isolated entire towns, displaced at least 300 residents who sought shelter with the Red Cross, knocked out the Evans Wastewater Treatment Plant, leaving thousands of residents with a “no flush” order and about 90 portable toilets strategically placed throughout neighborhoods to compensate.

“Right now, we’re switching gears to a recovery phase, and obviously infrastructure issues are probably just as important to getting people back to normal as it is to getting back in residences,” Reams said.

Many residents evacuated Friday were able to return to what was left of their properties on Saturday.

Kyle Kempema opened the door to his home on E. 18th Street on Saturday to a thick coat of mud on the floor, boxes spilling their contents and a distinct, mucky odor. Just east of Kempema’s home, a thigh-high stream of water still ran across E. 18th Street.

“Everybody that’s lived here forever said it never comes this far,” she said.

Many spent the day evacuating their pets and farm animals. The Humane Society of Weld County, the Weld Sheriff’s Posse and several area veterinary practices all helped to round up and care for animals that ranged from house pets to livestock.

But some weren’t so lucky to move their animals. Fabiola Garcia, who fled her east Greeley home in pajamas with no other change of clothes, said she and her husband lost four horses.

Virgil Kapperman said water rushed in so quickly, it left east Greeley residents with few choices.

“In 15 minutes, it was 3 feet high,” Kapperman said. He said the only option he had was to open up the pen enclosing about a dozen horses there and hope that they found higher ground.

The county also saw an outpouring of charity, as many rolled up their sleeves to help stranded residents in any way they could. Greeley-based JBS, which runs the meatpacking plant in north Greeley, set up a Saturday afternoon lunch for displaced residents. Noble Energy announced a $500,000 donation to the Red Cross to help displaced families and brought in 12 trucks loaded with pallets of water and supplies to Milliken. Anadarko Petroleum Corp. and Halliburton trucked pallets of water to Firestone. Greeley Wesleyan Church will open its shower facilities for residents today.

The flood did cause one 3-inch oil pipeline near Fort Lupton to rupture on Thursday. Weld County spokeswoman Jennifer Finch said Saturday that first responders discovered the rupture after first coming across another pipeline.

“There was about a 20-inch pipeline where the foundation had completely been eroded away from the water. It was just hanging there. That’s what caught their eye,” she said. “That pipeline was fine. They walked around some more in that area. That’s when they found another pipeline. It was about three inches. That one was ruptured.”

The leak was contained within a gravel pit around the pipeline, and it did not go into the river, she said. With help from industry officials, authorities quickly determined the pipeline belonged to Anadarko, which immediately shut it down.

Finch said the response from the industry impressed the first responders.

“They were very impressed with how quickly all the oil companies responded and how quickly Anadarko took care of the situation,” she said.

Finch said all the oil companies in the county began shutting in their wells to prepare them for the flood on Wednesday. She said since Thursday, there have been no concerns about he safety of other pipelines or wells.

“In a county that’s got 20,000-plus oil and gas wells, that’s the only incident, and it was taken care of pretty quickly,” she said. “I think that’s pretty good.” In a statement, Gary Wockner, of Clean Water Action, told The Denver Post on Saturday that having oil and gas operations in floodplains is inherently risky.

“Flood waters can topple facilities and spread oil, gas, and cancer-causing fracking chemicals across vast landscapes making contamination and clean-up efforts exponentially worse and more complicated.”

While Reams said for the most part, residents have been patient and understanding as they’ve dealt with evacuations and road closures, deputies continued to have problems with people crossing barriers on closed roads to watch the flooding and take pictures of this historic event.

“I talked with guys today, and we’ll start having to issue summonses for people who continue go around them,” Reams said. “They’re going to get a better look, but they don’t realize they’re driving on a roadbed that could easily give way beneath them. People who live in those areas, they need to be able to get heir properties back in order.”

Reams said officials spent Saturday assessing the damage throughout the county, learning that of the 140 closed roads, only about half could be reopened when the waters recede. Conway said the county deployed 16 teams of county road and bridge crews to assess conditions, but they will not have anything definitive until the water recedes.

“Of the closures we have, 50 percent will be closed for a while, and some are pretty significant, like U.S. 34 east of Greeley,” Reams said.

The South Platte, which reached a whopping 19 feet by first light Saturday had receded only a couple of feet by 5 p.m. The river carved itself a whole new route, Reams said, expanding from Evans’ northeastern boundaries by about a mile.

“It’s still flowing under the bridge, but it’s flowing through U.S. 34 where it used to be, a mile to the east to where the river bridge is,” Reams said. “There are now two sections where it intersects 34. There’s a 200 yard gap where there’s no road.”